This is Taylor 's page. This is also my product that i will be working on for a while. I am studying the Holocaust, specifically the concentration camps.. My space will consist of notes, dates, pictures, and more.
These are Holocaust survivor stories:
I saw them do the killing. At 5:00 p.m. they gave the command, "Fill in the pits." Screams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbor Ruderman rise from under the soil … His eyes were bloody and he was screaming: "Finish me off!" … A murdered woman lay at my feet. A boy of five years crawled out from under her body and began to scream desperately. "Mommy!" That was all I saw, since I fell unconscious. [O]ne after the other, they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and overgarments and also underwear … Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him. Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the Camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated, since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz. –Rudolf Höß, Auschwitz camp commandant, Nuremberg testimony – In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labor camp, even in the death camps, the will to resist was strong, and took many forms. Fighting with the few weapons that would be found, individual acts of defiance and protest, the courage of obtaining food and water under the threat of death, the superiority of refusing to allow the Germans their final wish to gloat over panic and despair. Even passivity was a form of resistance. To die with dignity was a form of resistance. To resist the demoralizing, brutalizing force of evil, to refuse to be reduced to the level of animals, to live through the torment, to outlive the tormentors, these too were acts of resistance. Merely to give a witness of these events in testimony was, in the end, a contribution to victory. Simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit." Martin Gilbert. The Holocaust
Death Marches: An icy wind blew in violent gusts. But we marched without faltering.
Pitch darkness. Every now and then, an explosion in the night. They had orders to fire on any who could not keep up. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of this pleasure. If one of us had stopped for a second, a sharp shot finished off another filthy son of a bitch.
Near me, men were collapsing in the dirty snow. Shots.
Belsen Concentration Camp: Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms ... He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days. This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.
Ghetto:
The Germans came, the police, and they started banging houses: "Raus, raus, raus, Juden raus." … One baby started to cry … The other baby started crying. So the mother urinated in her hand and gave the baby a drink to keep quiet … When the police had gone, I told the mothers to come out. And one baby was dead … from fear, the mother had choked her own baby.
Notes:
Many experiment were performed, especially on children
The worst was Doctor Joseph Mengele, who worked mainly with Romani children
His experiments included drugging kids, putting them in a pressure chamber until their eyes exploded, changing kids' eye colors by injecting chemicals into them
Here is a Joseph Mengele story:
I remember one set of twins in particular: Guido and Ina, aged about four. One day, Mengele took them away. When they returned, they were in a terrible state: they had been sewn together, back to back, like Siamese twins. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus. They screamed day and night. Then their parents—I remember the mother's name was Stella—managed to get some morphine and they killed the children in order to end their suffering.
Anonymous
Germans would take over countries, then exterminate all the jews they could
Even the SS leader would puke when he saw a 100 jews shot in cold blood, and a piece of brain hit him in the face and he passed out
The killings were not going fast enough to satisfy the Germans, so they decided to build camps specifically for this purpose- to kill many jews very fast
The camps were brutal-if you were a male and able to work, you were sent to the camps. Otherwise, you were immediately gassed or cremated alive.
Some women were kept to do some work as well, and to do experiments on, as well as for the pleasure of the officers
People in the camps got one meager slice of bread and a small bowl of old soup for the day
They were forced to wake up at 3:30 am, and they did not get to go to bed until around 10:30 or 11:00 pm, leaving them only 4-5 hours of sleep, if that
People were slowly killed off, either of starvation or bleeding to death or disease or anything like that
It was known that a man never came back alive from sick call, so they never admitted they were sick
German officers sometimes would strip men that were sick or backtalking, and stake them outside at night. During the night(the Germans knew this of course) some Russians who had been at the camps for years, would come out and eat the man alive
The camps were cramped, with almost 100 people in a 10 by 10 foot room, by stacking them in bunk beds made of wood, which was very uncomfortable
People would try to kill themselves just to get out of the torture
When the Allies were closing in, the Germans forced the Jews to march. March for days and days to another camp
If you fell down, you were dead. if you slept during the night, you might get eated. if u were too slow, then you would be shot. these horrible marches were known as the Death Marches, and killed many of the remaining Jews in the camps
This is Taylor 's page. This is also my product that i will be working on for a while. I am studying the Holocaust, specifically the concentration camps.. My space will consist of notes, dates, pictures, and more.
These are Holocaust survivor stories:
I saw them do the killing. At 5:00 p.m. they gave the command, "Fill in the pits." Screams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbor Ruderman rise from under the soil … His eyes were bloody and he was screaming: "Finish me off!" … A murdered woman lay at my feet. A boy of five years crawled out from under her body and began to scream desperately. "Mommy!" That was all I saw, since I fell unconscious.
[O]ne after the other, they had to remove their luggage, then their coats, shoes, and overgarments and also underwear … Once undressed, they were led into the ravine which was about 150 meters long and 30 meters wide and a good 15 meters deep … When they reached the bottom of the ravine they were seized by members of the Schutzpolizei and made to lie down on top of Jews who had already been shot … The corpses were literally in layers. A police marksman came along and shot each Jew in the neck with a submachine gun … I saw these marksmen stand on layers of corpses and shoot one after the other … The marksman would walk across the bodies of the executed Jews to the next Jew, who had meanwhile lain down, and shoot him.
Another improvement we made over Treblinka was that we built our gas chambers to accommodate 2,000 people at one time, whereas at Treblinka their 10 gas chambers only accommodated 200 people each. The way we selected our victims was as follows: we had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the Camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated, since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under the clothes but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated. We were required to carry out these exterminations in secrecy but of course the foul and nauseating stench from the continuous burning of bodies permeated the entire area and all of the people living in the surrounding communities knew that exterminations were going on at Auschwitz.
– Rudolf Höß, Auschwitz camp commandant, Nuremberg testimony
–
In every ghetto, in every deportation train, in every labor camp, even in the death camps, the will to resist was strong, and took many forms. Fighting with the few weapons that would be found, individual acts of defiance and protest, the courage of obtaining food and water under the threat of death, the superiority of refusing to allow the Germans their final wish to gloat over panic and despair.
Even passivity was a form of resistance. To die with dignity was a form of resistance. To resist the demoralizing, brutalizing force of evil, to refuse to be reduced to the level of animals, to live through the torment, to outlive the tormentors, these too were acts of resistance. Merely to give a witness of these events in testimony was, in the end, a contribution to victory. Simply to survive was a victory of the human spirit."
Martin Gilbert. The Holocaust
Death Marches:
An icy wind blew in violent gusts. But we marched without faltering.
Pitch darkness. Every now and then, an explosion in the night. They had orders to fire on any who could not keep up. Their fingers on the triggers, they did not deprive themselves of this pleasure. If one of us had stopped for a second, a sharp shot finished off another filthy son of a bitch.
Near me, men were collapsing in the dirty snow. Shots.
Belsen Concentration Camp:
Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which ... The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them ... Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live ... A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms ... He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.
Ghetto:
The Germans came, the police, and they started banging houses: "Raus, raus, raus, Juden raus." … One baby started to cry … The other baby started crying. So the mother urinated in her hand and gave the baby a drink to keep quiet … When the police had gone, I told the mothers to come out. And one baby was dead … from fear, the mother had choked her own baby.
Notes:
- Many experiment were performed, especially on children
- The worst was Doctor Joseph Mengele, who worked mainly with Romani children
- His experiments included drugging kids, putting them in a pressure chamber until their eyes exploded, changing kids' eye colors by injecting chemicals into them
Here is a Joseph Mengele story:I remember one set of twins in particular: Guido and Ina, aged about four. One day, Mengele took them away. When they returned, they were in a terrible state: they had been sewn together, back to back, like Siamese twins. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus. They screamed day and night. Then their parents—I remember the mother's name was Stella—managed to get some morphine and they killed the children in order to end their suffering.
Anonymous
Resources:
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust</span>
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=enModuleId=100005143
http://www.42explore2.com/holoc.htm/